Wednesday, 30 September 2009

Sensational, if somewhat dated, news dear Melted Felt readers - as we bring you the shocking exclusive scooptastic and utterly imaginary news that one Joe Sebok (famous for being the not gay son of a Barry Tanebaum, erm, no, Harry Greenday, erm) has signed an exclusive sponsorship agreement with Ultimate Bet to become their official furry mascot - and head honcho in the new role of not being gay.

Sebok's new duties as head of not being gay in the slightest include a diverse range of un-gay activities. While the forum dogs who only ever play on UB under pseudonyms cried 'foul' Sebok announced he would be working hard towards having all of the suspected 'Superuser' hand histories released so that he could personally verify that there is nothing gay about them while soaking in a bath full of scented rose petals and drinking bacardi with diet coke.

Stating a will to bring any and all gay superusers to justice, Joe stated categorically that he was backed by the Kahnawake Gaming corporation in implementing limp-wristed mouse click detection software via a the all new completely heterosexual Cereus security centre. Though as a politically correct concession they were considering offering branded pink fluffy 'Sebok' slippers via the VIP store.

At the time of writing the positions of 'head of not being fat as fuck' and 'head of persecuting religious minorities' were unfilled - though in a very disturbing development we understand that part of the selection process for the post of head of not being gay actually involved repeated viewings of Phil Hellmuth's big entrance...

Thursday, 24 September 2009

Melted Felt today break the poker blogging mould once again - an no we are not thinking Athletes Foot - we are actually bringing you a post from the far future.... 1000 years onwards no less.

Yes, dear Melted Felt readers, it was unvelied today the 24th September 3010, that archeologists working on some 1000 year old sites in the New North Mexico (once known as the 'USA' - pronounced 'You-Ess-Ayy', not 'Oousaar') discovered some very disturbing evidence of a mass existinction of post-flop poker players dated somewhere around 2003 or 2004.

When mapped onto the known mitochonrial groupings it appears that the divergence of Homo Sapiens into serapate species at the poker tables did not lead to equilibrium and harmony as expected... evidence strongly indicates that we saw a complete breakdown in post-flop play starting in 2004 with the sub-species of Homo Handreadience finally dying out by 2006. At this point in the records show a dramatic increase in Homo Pushmonkiens and Homo Shortstackiens in the poker world to the point where the former species either had to move to the Pot-Limit Omaha tables or die out completely.

While the fossils and retreived data samples only allow us to hypothesise about how and why post-flop play so suddenly and dramatically disappears there does seem to be a strong causal link with the introduction of genetic mutations causing people to quote ICM numbers, 5-bet light in multi-table tournaments and spend 14 hours a day grinding 12 tables in order to get a rebate on some of the money they paid poker sites for the honor of getting part of it back.

The dig will now continue into the layer of history known as 'Those good old days on Party when you could make a living grinding playing just 12 minutes a day'. We will of course bring you more news as it is uncovered....

Monday, 21 September 2009

Well well, Dear Melted Felt readers... just as you were expecting the inevitable garlic muncher based gags after Elky's WCOOP we go the other way.

Yes, time for an entry which is almost guaranteed to be completely over the head of 90% of our readers. We just hope that the remaining 10% enjoy our special low stakes tournament adaption of Alfred, Lord Tennyson's 'The Charge Of The Light Brigade'... today we proudly present a modern-day epic, destined to be the homework of schoolchildren in 200 years time, yes, it is...

The Charge Of The Donk Brigade

1.Half a bankroll, half a Bankroll,Half my Bankroll Buy-in,All in the valley of Virtual FeltSat the six hundred."Forward, the Donk Brigade!"Charge for the Unsuited Ace-6's!" he said:Into the valley of FeltDonked the six hundred.

2."Forward, the Donk Brigade!"Was there a man dismay'd?Not tho' the poker player knewSomeone had blunder'd:Theirs not to type chat reply,Theirs not to reason why,Theirs but to call and fry:Into the valley of FeltDonked the five hundred.

3.Calling Stations to right of them,Fishes to left of them,Min-raisers in front of themDonk Bet and Slowrolle'd;Tilted at with any 2 suited cards,Boldly they played and well,Into the jaws of another suckout,Into the mouth of tiltDonked the four hundred.

4.Flash'd all their aces bare,Flash'd as they hit trips with air,Limping along with the others there,Calling as an army, while All the world wonder'd:Raised with rags into the smokeRight thro' the kings they broke;Cannuk and Russian Reel'd from the doomswitch strokeShatter'd and sunder'd.Then they wrote back to their forum buds, but notNot the three hundred.

5.Calling Stations to right of them,Fishes to left of them,Min-raisers in front of themDonk Bet and Slowrolle'd;Folded getting six to one,While fish and semi-pro fell,They that had fought so wellCame thro' the jaws of DonksBack from the mouth of suckout hell,All that was left of them,Left of two hundred.

6.When can their glory fade?O the wild charge they made!All the world wondered.Honor their sharkscope graphs,Honor the donk Brigade,Noble final table.

Wednesday, 16 September 2009

Hot news this morning, dear Melted Felt readers, as we review the updates and changes in the latest version of Poker Trackar - a software tool not be be accidentially or inadventantly mixed up with the well known poker database software with a very similar sounding name.

Yes, dear Readers, a special cheap as chips edition aimed at Micro-stakes players has been released for those who prefer the penny antes - and not only does it contain a fully functional back-end and heads-up display... but some extra features specifically aimed at players 25c / 50c at the and under tables - these include:

- For Micro multi-tablers - A 'Beep Beep' alert with flashing icon has been introduced whenever you are dealt two cards which are suited.

- You'll be able to prove that you are good but unlucky with the new, percentage pre-flop figure... which transposes your winning chances with your red aces vs 9-10 pre-flop without bothering to account for the fact that the vast majority of the money went in on the river on a 4-6-7-8-9 board with 4 clubs...

- A heads-up display which gives you statistics on-screen about how often each opponent open limps, limps behind, mini-raises limpers, check-mini-raises flops and mini bets out of position into the entire field on the flop - allowing you to make instant strategic decisions.

- Special database Algorithms which change the red (losses) colum to green, based on what you would have won if you just had average luck.

- An add-on which keeps a specially designed fish-list, this automatically overlays the word 'Retard' in big letters over people who are dumb enough to fold a missed ace-six off suit on the river, deny that the ICM stage of SNG tournaments are actually just 'Bingo' or open fold more than 25% of their starting hands.

Monday, 14 September 2009

A Year, dear Melted Felt readers, is a long time in poker. Safe in the knowledge that more than 80% of the players who were at the virtual tables when the Ultimate Bet Scandal was news went broke and started a new hobby, the Kahnawake Gaming Association - a completely independent organization which protects the interest of the gambling sites who pay a subscription, no, hang on there, we mean 'A completely independent organization which protects the interests of poker players worldwide' (cough) have released a report!

Anyway, the report itself was somewhat shorter than expected, though the key points were covered in the appendix.

Appendix 1:

1 - Hopefully a year is long enough for the fuckers to have forgotten...

2 - Hahaha, the scandal was going on since 2002, and they did not even notice, call themselves poker experts??!?

3 - Maybe a year is long enough for those people who likened the UB scandal to the rise of Facism in 1930's Germany to have realized that this is a standard and very weak argument that 99% of intelligent people realize is only ever rolled out by people who are extremely bad at debating anything at all based on facts and / or opinions.

5 - Russ did it, it was Russ, the management of UB are completely innocent and are nice to small children and fluffy animals, in fact they might even donate large sums to church-based charity, while Russ has webbed fingers and eats babies.

Well, dear Melted Felt readers, it made the news sites, it made the fourms, and it made the odd blog or two... now it is over we can all forget it and return to our previous passtime of debating how shit the Durrrr Challenge turned out to be.

Sunday, 13 September 2009

An exclusive involving some of the biggest names in the world of gambling today, dear Melted Felt readers, as we delve deep into the high flying, cigar smoking, cognac drinking world of mega-corporations...

Yes - after hearing the news that Hurrahs (not to mixed up with any large casino operators with similar sounding names you understand ;o) ) chose 889 holdings to develop their online poker offering we immediately despatched the Melted Felt mole - our very own investigative journalist - to find out more

To say his findings were 'unusual' would be an understatement

It all started when Mitch Barber, Party Poker's former head of Hairdressing and now Hurrah's head of 'interweb modern stuff and computation machines' was shopping at his local Wal-Mart in the suburbs of Las Vegas.

Coming across a bargain bucket full of CDs and DVDs Mitch has a good rummage around, he was already feeling quite pleased with himself after discovering 'The Best Of The Shadows' for only 99c, and was contemplating buying the directors cut of 'Ghostbusters' for $2.59c when he came across a business proposal from 889.com holdings... reading the back of the box it turned out that he could get a bargain development of poker software which would immediately alienate future players and get them rushing over to Poker stars for just $2.99, and if he sent off the card inside (postage paid!) with his details, he would get a coupon for 2 hours of lobbying of Congress absolutely free...

Being a positive blog we are looking forward to the opportunity to play poker at such prestigeous brands, assuming we can actually find the tables once logged on to the lobby.

Monday, 7 September 2009

We bring you an absolute shocker today, dear Melted Felt readers, as we sadly resount the tale of the devastating effect that online poker can have on previously warm and loving family relationship.

Yes, when David Hoff enrolled at Yale his family were overjoyed, when he passed the first year with distinctions they were extastic, and when he continued the A-grades through the next 5 semesters they were in family-pride-heaven.

David then discovered that his even temperament and analytical mind were perfectly suited to online poker. After dabbling in lower level SNGs, MTTs and Limit Games, David settled on No-Limit Holdem as his focus area - buying a subscription to Cardrunners and the latest poker tracking software and playing short and focused sessions, he managed to bring his win rate to 3 PTBBs / 100 playing the 5c / 10c game.

When Patricia and Randy Hoff, Davids parents, caught wind of their son's new hobby they immediately looked up all the information available online. Concluding that David should move up to at least 50c / $1, learn to multi-table and would then be able to earn wayyyy more than he could in any shitty office job, and have the freedom to manage his own time too.

This is where the trouble began, David rejecting their urgings to quit college with just 2 semesters to go and become a small-stakes pro - pointing out that his parents comparisons were based only on his initial earnings and not future possibilities.

We spoke to his mom Pat, who was still very angry that her only son has rejected the only sensible path in life to go down the 9 to 5 route. "After all the love, compassion and hard cash we have given him" She started, "this is our reward", drying a tear from her eye she continuted, "he could have earned $50k in his first year, and then maybe moved up levels - with rakeback that could easily be a $100k per year just from grinding in a darkened room 10 hours a day and being a social recluse with no girlfriend and a vitamin D deficiency"

With David 100% determined to get a degree and lead a balanced and healthy life we really do not see how this dispute can be easily resolved... while David did point out that his sample of 7000 hands at 5c / 10c was far from statistically water-tight his Dad absolutely insists that if David just had áverage luck' he would be crushing the games and could then move up the levels to where people respect his raises.

As a polite and well brought-up poker satire blog, we thought it only right to let the lady of the house have the last word, wiping away more tears Patricia told us, "snffffffm, he could have been, snffffff, so 'balla' in the eyes of all the members of our favorite forum, snffff"

Thursday, 3 September 2009

In a vaguely sensational Melted Felt exclusive we bring you the low-down on the spin behind the legal-speak in the vaguely worded response the law suit that claimed the UIGEA was clearly too vague to be legal - under the constitution no less.

Yes, dear Melted Felt readers, the outcome disappointed observers, who were sure that the vagueness argument was crystal clear. As it turns out, to be considered too vague, a law must be vague in all states... and after one or two senators from *ahem* more conservative states passed their own laws making anything vaguely pleasurable completely illegal the argument was dead in the water - and so dried up.

With the future of online gambling in the balance we sent the MF Mole to look through the fine details of the reading and find out who is really responsible for the decision making at the end of the day.

3rd Circuit appeals court judges actually passed this decision to the individual states, who in turn passed it to the county and metropolitan area authorities, who passed the decision down to the local level, who left it up to individual church parishes who empowered the family units to make their own decisions... Yes, dear Melted Felt readers, playing poker online may or may not be legal... you are just going to have to wait until your father gets home to find out.

Tuesday, 1 September 2009

Sensational is the only world, dear Melted Felt readers, to describe the poker deposits alledgedly stolen from a small poker site that nobody had ever heard of called Eurolinx - if the forum posts are to be believed that is. After finding that the losses alledged on popular forums would total up to more than the GDP of the entire planet we figured something fishy was going on....

While the Melted Felt team are somewhat confused as to how a poker room whose very games are set up so that the players play each other and a rake goes to the house can actually lose money, in the interests of cutting-edge investigative journalism we sent out our very own Melted Felt Mole to find some unfortunate victims of the alledged dodgy goings on.

First a prolific forum poster who went by the name of Ivey1234 was tracked down to his mothers house in downtown Trondheim, Norway. Olaf kicked up a big storm about the $65,000 he had 'stolen' from his Eurolinx account and was keen that everyone knew that he was looking into every legal avenue to get his money back and would not rest until someone paid him back.

We had to wait until Olaf finished up his tasty Whale-blubber soup for supper before his Mom would let us speak to him. While he welcomed the chance to have our investigator look into the possibilities for his $60k, Olaf could not explain how his entire poker history on any of the tracking sites showed a best ever score of 17th in a play-money MTT on Stars... and we were not to worry as he had $500,000,000 on other poker sites so it was only small change anyway.

After this confusing episode we were relieved to be contacted by a Brit who asked to be referred to only as 'Player F' to protect the fact that Frank Booth, of 27 Acacia Drive, London, NW8 telephone 0108 8254 165 age 27 with slightly receding brown hair, a big nose terrible taste in shirts did not want his true identity revealed online.

Frank's tale is a cautionary one, while he 'lost' around $14,000 when Eurolinx went down. The key emotion is embarrassment, after all he went to great lengths to perfect (in as patronising a voice as possible) the line that poker was a game of skill over time and that those who thought he was a gambler just did not understand the true nature of the game. We then spoke to Frank's friends and family who were in the process of pooling all possible spare cash to prevent Frank from coming out of his dark room to bore them too often... one friend raised the ugly spectre of an online poker grinder actually reproducing to ensure funds were donated fast.